


No Rest For The Wicked

by Penknife



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Backstory, Canon Trans Character, Developing Friendships, Gen, Halward Pavus' A+ Parenting, queer community
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22107958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: There's a time to ask for help, and it's probably when you've burned all your bridges behind you. (Or, when Dorian met Maevaris.)
Relationships: Dorian Pavus & Maevaris Tilani
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60





	No Rest For The Wicked

The problem, Dorian feels, is that between the bridges he's burned and the people who might conceivably take his father's side rather than his own, he's disposed of a large number of his friends and acquaintances before he even sits down to write. His relatives: out of the question, even the ones who generally appear to find him charming. Alexius: impossible. His former instructors at half a dozen circles throughout Tevinter: might conceivably be inspired to write him a letter of reference, but are unlikely to lend him money. 

His friends, such as they are: frankly it's a short list, after two years in which his company has frequently been neither sober nor safe nor particularly entertaining. Abrexis: has already failed to respond to letters, which may mean that he has not forgiven Dorian for having the poor taste to be kidnapped from his bedroom, a bloody and unpleasant scene, although not one of Dorian's choosing. Or it might merely mean that Ulio Abrexis is intercepting his son's mail, but the result is the same. His lovers, such as they've been, since he ran away from home with the clothes on his back: not, as a rule, generous men, except when it comes to buying drinks. 

That leaves Felix, and he writes to Felix without much hope of an answer. He expects the letter to be intercepted by Alexius and burned before it reaches Felix's eyes, and so he is cautious, saying nothing that can be a weapon against anyone but himself: 

_Dear Felix,_

_By now you must think I'm dead. I'm afraid I haven't managed that, but I have reached what feels very much like the end of my rope. My father has made it clear that he feels my predilections render me a disgrace to the family name. I hardly feel inclined to argue, but that puts the_ _Pavus_ _family resources entirely out of my reach. I have no right whatsoever to ask, but if you find yourself possessed of some small sum of money for which you have no pressing use, it would make a considerable difference to me._

_Yours, with all conceivable apologies for being unforgivably awful,_

_Dorian_ _Pavus_

It's an unbearably honest letter, and he's grateful that he still has enough coin left to get thoroughly drunk after writing it. He stays drunk long enough that he's nearly forgotten that he sent it, until he wanders into the drinking establishment that he provided as a return address and the proprietor tosses a letter at him. It's under a familiar seal, and his heart twists in his chest. He abruptly no longer desires to be drunker, and takes the letter outside to read it in the scalding sun. 

_Dear Dorian,_

_You should have written. I've been worried that you were in some kind of trouble, and_ _apparently_ _I was right. I've sent you some money, and you can pay me back when you get back on your feet. It should be enough for you to get to_ _Minrathous_ _. I'm including a letter of introduction to_ _Maevaris_ _Tilani_ _. She's a friend of a friend, but she's fairly spectacular, and she'll let you stay for a while with no questions asked. Please write once you're settled and tell me you're all right._

_Your friend,_

_Felix_

The letter contains a note of hand drawn on Felix's personal bank account for an exceedingly generous sum. It isn't a letter that Dorian deserves to receive, and shame combines poorly with last night's drinks and this morning's—he's frankly not sure about this morning. He puts his head on his knees for a while, and then considers the letter and its contents again with a harder calculation. 

It's enough money to keep him for a while in what will at this point seem like great luxury. Assuming that it isn't a trap intended to scoop him up and return him to his father's care the moment he walks into the bank. But he can't believe that of Felix. That he wouldn't receive the letter, that he would be too hurt by Dorian's desertion to agree to help, that he would be already too ill to notice or care—all possible. That he actually intends to betray Dorian to his father in cold blood, even not knowing the cause of their rift, seems impossible. 

But, then, hasn't Dorian learned better than to believe anyone's motivations beyond doubt? He could live on the money Felix has sent and assume that the future will take care of itself. It would be far easier than getting himself back to Minrathous and attempting to make himself acceptable to Magister Tilani, even assuming that Felix's introduction carries sufficient weight to overcome whatever she might have heard from Dorian's father. 

He's heard all the scandalous gossip about Magister Tilani, of course. He's even met her a few times, beginning when he was still a child and she an apprentice, impeccably dressed, carefully composed, and whispered about viciously behind her back. More recently, Dorian's father objected to her being seated in the Magisterium, which makes Dorian more favorably disposed toward her sight unseen. It doesn't necessarily imply that she'll feel particularly favorably disposed toward him. It's tempting not to make the effort to reach for the lifeline he's been thrown, and instead to continue to drift. 

Instead he gets up and goes back to his lodgings and rummages among his few clothes for something that looks sober and respectable. He has little at present that isn't instead flashy and cheap. He finds an acceptable shirt and trousers in a neutral black, wipes most of the kohl off his face, and takes a razor boldly to his hair until he's achieved a style that at least looks purposeful. 

His heart is still in his throat when he walks into the bank, but the Pavus family amulet hanging about his neck and his best look of bored superiority prevent any questions from being asked at all. Fifteen minutes later he is leaving the bank with cash in hand. An hour later, he has collected his regrettable belongings and is moving in the direction of Minrathous. Having an direction at all is an improvement, so he tries not to care whether it's a wise one. 

***** 

When Dorian delivers Felix's letter to Magister Tilani's townhouse, he is unobjectionably dressed and entirely sober. By the time he returns in the evening to see if there is some reply, he has been drinking, but is not actually drunk, a distinction he feels is important. He is dressed to venture forth and drown his sorrows, on the preemptive assumption that there will either be no reply, or the reply that the Magister is too busy to bother herself with the affairs of one Dorian Pavus. 

"The Magister is expecting you," the man at the door says, and opens it very properly for him. 

It is possible that he does not look entirely the picture of a respectable potential protégé. On the other hand, if she's expecting one, it's entirely possible they won't get on well together. There's a certain appeal to beginning as he means to go on. 

"By all means, lead the way," he says. 

It's after dinner time even in Minrathous, and Magister Tilani is settled in an armchair with a drink at her elbow and a book open on her lap, wearing an open robe in shades of drowning blue over her well-tailored gown. Either she had dinner guests who have now departed, or it's her custom to dress for dinner even when she dines alone. She dismisses the servant with an offhand wave, and considers Dorian with interest. 

"Your friend writes persuasively on your behalf," she says. 

"I try to be persuasive on my own behalf as well," Dorian says. The corner of her mouth twitches, and she stands up to consider him with an even more frankly assessing eye. 

"You can't possibly imagine that what you're wearing is in fashion." 

"I prefer to set fashions rather than follow them." 

"You look like a wine-soaked peacock," she says. "Your shirt is also not clean." 

"The exigencies of travel." 

She looks amused, at least. "I understand that you've managed to alienate both Magister Alexius and your father," she says. 

He should clearly reply with some witty and succinct explanation, and finds it infuriating that instead there's a knot in his throat around which he can't seem to form words. 

"Well, then," she says, in a somewhat different tone. "Are those your bags? Marcellus," she says, and a liveried footman appears without her having to raise her voice. "Marcellus will show you to the green bedroom. Go and change your clothes, and then you can tell me all about it." 

"I'm sorry?" Dorian says, uncertain of where they've just arrived. 

"You're my guest. You're going to have a drink with me and tell me your troubles. Be a good boy and don't leave me waiting too long." 

The green bedroom features a bed made up with soft sheets and piled high with silk brocade covers, a folding screen decorated with stylized leaves, and lead-glassed windows looking down into the narrow atrium below where benches nestle among an assortment of potted trees. Dorian retrieves an alternate shirt, cleaner if not necessarily more respectable, and washes his face in cold water. 

He starts at the sound of the door opening, and then as the footman enters attempts not to watch him suspiciously as if he expected to be murdered or robbed. It's possible that his reflexes are somewhat inappropriate at present. The man shows himself back out, leaving behind a heavy raw silk caftan—he suspects it of being Magister Tilani's, but it isn't more than an inch too short on him, and is deliciously warm—and a pair of slippers. 

Once in them, he feels the knot in his throat return treacherously, and banishes it through a vigorous effort of will. He is not, he tells himself scathingly, _safe_. Besides, that implies that he's been in some sort of danger, rather than being a man of the world entirely capable of fending for himself. Which certainly he is. 

He has to admit, however, once downstairs and settled in an armchair with a drink in his hand, that his certainty that he's capable of fending for himself is considerably restored. 

"Magister Tilani," he says, raising the glass in appreciation. It's an excellent vintage, if his standards hadn't been permanently ruined by what he's been drinking lately. 

"You needn't be so formal, I'm not proposing to take you on as an apprentice," Maevaris says. "I don't need one, and you're too old to be one, so let's put that notion out of our minds at once. I had in mind 'houseguest,' which requires much less effort on your part." 

"How much effort does it require?" he asks, with more of an edge to the words than he intends. 

"Not whatever you're thinking. I'm not in the market for a kept boy, either, and I don't expect you'd do me much good in that department, so let's move briskly past that as well, why don't we? I take it you can't go home." 

"I won't," Dorian says coldly. "I'd rather die." 

"No blood on my floor, please," she says, and then, with a searching expression, "Drink your drink, I'd prefer for you not to faint, either. We'll consider Halward Pavus no longer required in any capacity. I take it you've burned your bridges beyond repair with Alexius as well?" 

"Do you always interrogate your houseguests?" Dorian asks, trying not to bristle. 

Maevaris considers him over the rim of her drink. "Is that the most courteous way you can think of to say 'that's none of your business'? I'm sincerely curious." 

"We had a falling out." 

"I can't imagine why." She sips her drink. "You may make yourself at home, for whatever value of 'at home' involves behaving yourself reasonably well. My rules are few. You may come and go as you please, but you will not bring home drunken friends to steal the silver or be messily sick on my floors. You will be tolerably polite to my friends." 

"How polite?" Dorian asks, and again there's an edge in his voice that he doesn't mean to be there. 

"I don't mean 'suck their cocks,' I mean 'refrain from deliberately insulting people whose company I enjoy.' I dine at eight, and I'm far too impatient a woman to wait upon your pleasure, so either present yourself at the table at the appointed hour or fend for yourself. And I expect you to give some thought to what you plan to do with yourself in the future." 

"What, and spoil my current record of being a disappointment to everyone I know?" It's possible that he shouldn't have had the drink, on top of the other drinks he already had earlier. The line between having been drinking and being drunk has become difficult to locate, which makes him suspect it's behind him. 

"If being respectable and being useless are the only options you've thought of, then you should definitely give the matter some further thought. You may make use of my roof over your head while you're doing it." 

"Why?" he asks flatly. 

Her expression is hard for him to interpret. "If our positions were reversed, wouldn't you feel a sense of responsibility? No, don't answer that question, I expect you wouldn't. Young people." She can't be ten years his senior, and probably more like five. "If you must have a nice selfish reason, you'll make a useful ally in the Magisterium someday." 

"I hardly think that's likely." 

"You're Halward Pavus's _only child_. It will be harder than you probably think for him to actually disinherit you in a way that can't be gotten round once he's dead. Believe me, I am intimately familiar with the law regarding inheritance of seats in the Magisterium. It's amazing what stubbornness, the right friends, and a few well-considered bribes can do." 

"Becoming a Magister was my father's idea of a bright future for me," Dorian says. "Not the pinnacle of his ambitions, but a necessary step." 

"Yes, but now it would spite him," she says. "Doesn't that make it even a tiny bit more enticing? You needn't answer that just now. Go and have a bath—you need one—and I will see you at some decent hour in the morning." 

He rises, sketches a bow, and helps himself to another drink, generously poured, to be friends with him in the bath. 

"If you fall down stairs while drunk, I'm not responsible," Maevaris says, and opens her book again. 

***** 

Dorian spends a considerable amount of the money that Felix sent him on two outfits decent enough to appear at Maevaris’s parties without her expression becoming skeptical. Armed with a heavy silk coat and finely woven trousers in this year’s newest shade of blue, and a floor-length oxblood robe for more serious or professional occasions, he can soldier through two gatherings with similar guest lists before the question of whether it’s too soon to appear in the same outfit becomes critical. 

The rest of the money he spends going out drinking, which becomes problematic at the point where the money begins running short. He will, at some point, have to acquire a third decent outfit, and not going out drinking is impractical, since his habits would put a strain on Maevaris’s generosity with her wine cellar. The clear implication is that he must find some way of earning money. 

The problem is that the months since he left home have made it clear that he is not particularly well equipped to earn a living by any legitimate or ultimately bearable means. Were he a specialist in healing, or anything equally practical, he could probably sell his services in the poorer quarters of the city where references would not be asked for, although he has the unfortunate suspicion that making a living that way requires some sort of business skill. 

It’s a moot point, anyway, since while he can heal a wound in a pinch, his true specialties have unfortunately few domestic applications. No one is looking for a cut-rate necromancer, or for an experimental (and so far unsuccessful) manipulator of the fabric of time, or for someone who can set things dramatically on fire. Or, at least, some people may be looking for those things, but Dorian has no interest in becoming an assassin or a mercenary, and suspects he is temperamentally unsuited to both. 

“How does one earn money, anyway?” Dorian asks, while sprawled in a chair at Maevaris’s breakfast table waiting for the Antivan coffee to take the edge off his hangover before he can face eating actual food. 

Maevaris pauses with lifted fork. “Do you mean how do I, or how can you?” 

“Either,” he says, with what he likes to think is airy unconcern. 

“In my case, sensible investments, and having been profitably bereaved.” Dorian has gathered that Thorold Tethris was Maevaris’s husband, or intended husband, or illicit lover; there’s some debate about which, but despite the irony of her tone, he's aware that her feelings were genuine. “In your case, if you had thoughts about teaching, I can tell you that no one will be eager to employ you as an instructor at present.” 

“I’m not sure I’m temperamentally suited to teaching,” Dorian says. 

“Were you actually once thrown out of a circle for setting your instructor on fire?” 

“It was very nearly accidental.” 

“And the matter of the illicit dueling—” 

“It wouldn’t have been illicit if I’d been allowed to do it.” 

“And the disturbance at Oppius’s party.” 

“I don’t recall the disturbance at Oppius’s party,” Dorian says more stiffly. He recalls arriving at the party, and has some recollection of being summarily evicted from the house and waking up the next morning in the elven quarter of the city in a bed with multiple occupants, but there must logically be multiple intervening hours that have slipped his mind. 

“I shouldn’t think so.” 

“Your point is that I have a reputation,” Dorian says. “I’m well aware.” 

“I have a reputation, but somehow it actually manages to be less incendiary than yours. Can you translate Ancient Tevene well?” 

“I’ve been reading it since I was eleven.” 

“Yes, congratulations, you may have a pastry,” she says, holding the basket out toward him. He feels somehow obscurely insulted, but takes one anyway. “But are you actually a good translator, or merely barely competent?” 

“I’m not at all bad,” he says. He’s interested in languages, and enjoys reproducing the way that the lines of ancient history and poetry roll magnificently off the tongue. 

“All right. I expect I can scare up some work for you from scholars who find it tedious work themselves, and whose apprentices have tin ears. If you tell me it’s beneath you, you will be making yourself tedious.” 

“The last thing I should ever want to be is boring,” Dorian says. 

Maevaris smiles and pours herself another cup of coffee. “I knew we’d get along just fine.” 

***** 

Dorian has always had a complicated relationship with parties. They offer an unparalleled opportunity to drink, sparkle conversationally, and win social points, and Dorian is good at all of these things. The trouble comes when the combination of alcohol, mandatory sparkling, and casual viciousness begins to leave a bitter taste in his mouth, and he begins to develop ideas about how to improve matters. 

This particular party begins going downhill early, when it becomes clear to Dorian that Maevaris’s hand-picked guests include dowagers who seem to be assessing his quality and introducing him to young ladies who are presumably somehow under their wing. Dorian begins the evening by flirting shamelessly, which is always entertaining even if intended to go nowhere, but late in the party both the wine and the conversation have begun to sour. 

“You’re remarkably ill-mannered,” one of the elderly ladies says after he’s startled a persistent young lady into flight with blatant innuendo. She frowns at him through a pair of half-moon spectacles. 

“A vice you should consider disqualifying if you intend to put me to stud,” he says. “I do hate to disappoint, and yet somehow I always do.” 

“Dorian, _darling_ , come and have a drink with me,” Maevaris says, hooking her arm through his. It’s not a grip that’s easily broken, and there’s steel in her tone. She hauls him out to the balcony. The lights of Minrathous glitter below, sparkling and distant and cold. 

“I perceive the remarkable absence of the promised drink,” Dorian says. 

“How clever you are,” Maevaris says. “Must you be cruel to a child several years your junior? And must you antagonize every potential ally you meet? The child included, once she sheds a regrettable schoolgirl tendency to swallow insults that should currently be resulting in a duel in the atrium.” 

“Attempts at matchmaking rarely agree with me,” Dorian says. 

“I’m not sure who could agree with you in your present mood. And I wouldn’t be unkind enough to inflict you on Apollonia, although the general idea does have its advantages. If you haven’t deduced that she’s got no more use for your cock than you do for her assorted points of interest, you haven’t been paying attention. But she’s a likeable child, and a respectable match might help you back onto firmer footing in society.” 

“I’m not interested in playing pretend,” Dorian says. “Not even with a woman who has her own reasons to play along.” 

“That’s noted,” Maevaris says. “Never mind, I find your stiff neck in some regards to be one of your admirable qualities, when you’re actually using the head attached to it. You are not the only one in what I will for argument’s sake call ‘polite society’ who shares your tastes. When I introduce you to some other members of that particular club who I consider sound when it comes to politics, I should like you to make an effort to seem like a person who it would be desirable to know.” 

“I will,” Dorian grants. 

Maevaris looks long-suffering. “When were you planning to start?” 

It’s not his fault, he tells himself. Devotees of hedonistic vices should not look like disapproving dowagers. “Your intentions might have been clearer if you’d included some eligible young men in the party.” 

“You become infinitely more difficult to manage in the presence of attractive men who aren’t immune to your charms. The last time one was here, you alternated between flirting and cutting him dead every time it seemed like he might be warming to you. I assume you were wrestling with temptation in some interesting internal drama, but it made the conversation awkward.” 

“I also dislike being managed,” Dorian says. “And being mocked.” 

“So you will fight at your own weight after all,” Maevaris says. “Would you care to duel with me? That should be interesting.” 

“Do you think I won’t?” Dorian demands. 

“That would be silly of me, wouldn’t it?” Maevaris says. “You wait for me down in the atrium and see if the cool air clears your head a bit, and I’ll tell Marcellus that we’ll be wanting drinks served for the spectators.” 

Dorian is an accomplished duelist, but Maevaris has several advantages that become clear as they circle each other in the garden. First, she is considerably more sober. Second, her preferred method of attack is ice, not fire, and Dorian is inhibited by feeling it would be poorly received to set the actual building on fire. He still manages to put on a creditable performance, flaming snakes lashing through the air to be enveloped by icy curls of snow. 

Maevaris duels with her usual neatly controlled grace. Dorian manages to leash his own tendency to blaze away indiscriminately, less angry now then determined not to make himself look like a fool. He coaxes fire into a blazing ball and sends it smashing toward her. She flings out her arm, finally less than perfectly composed, and meets it with a jagged spike of ice. There is a tremendous noise, a very brief hailstorm against the flagstones, and then a cloud of rising steam that wreaths them both. 

When it clears, Maevaris is holding out a hand to him. “Dorian Pavus, ladies and gentlemen,” she says, winning a pattering of applause. “Now come kiss and make up, before we make too much of a mess of the poor orange trees.” 

She snags a drink from one of the trays to bring to him, which he considers to be a peace offering. It’s an acceptable enough one that he does let her brush a sisterly kiss against his cheek before she makes her way back to join her other guests like a singed but unruffled swan. 

***** 

It’s a familiar comfort to be back in the Great Library searching through books and scrolls for the texts that Dorian has agreed to translate. It’s somewhat more challenging to do so while hung over, or on one unfortunate occasion not yet sober. After spending an evening on a translation that when viewed through sober eyes the next morning is amusingly phrased but not remotely appropriate for scholarly purposes, he concludes that it is possible that he should, in fact, drink less. 

That is, actually, difficult, which Dorian finds disturbing. He’s always been quick to give in to temptation, but he’s always preferred to think that giving in to temptation was entirely under his control. And it is, he’s certain that it is, and yet all the reasons why it would be a good idea to have drink after drink crowd his mind when he is trying to think about declension. This shouldn’t be a question for him, he knows all the right answers for the demons of desire— _there is nothing I want more than to maintain the power to choose_ — 

And still he can’t sleep without spiraling down into unwanted thoughts, and still the bottle has a siren song. He takes wine at dinner and nothing more, and goes to bed early like a good child for a week, and then goes out drinking and drags back in after dawn with bruises purpling round his collar where a new friend held him too enthusiastically by the throat, more satisfied than ashamed, but not entirely unashamed. 

Maevaris is getting up as he goes to bed, and rakes him with her gaze, but merely shrugs. “If you’re expecting me to scold you, I’m afraid you’ll have to arrange your own regrets.” 

“I never regret anything,” Dorian says. 

“Do you know, you aren’t as good a liar as you seem to think?” There’s something like kindness in her tone, and Dorian takes himself upstairs before he has to face any more of it. 

There are, in fact, advantages to not spending every evening getting drunk. The work goes more quickly, words not only spilling from his pen but also arranging themselves into neat lines that capture sound and sense. He finds himself prowling the shelves for volumes that are not strictly related to the work at hand, and while his credentials may not be impressive to prospective employers, they are sufficient to explain why he wants books on magical theory. He reads in the evenings, sprawled on a bench in the garden, and is beginning to assemble thoughts. 

The only problem is that he’s not sure for whose benefit the thoughts might be. There’s no admiring mentor, no circle to impress, no public who respects his reputation, no family— 

The obvious best response to that line of thought is to drink heavily, but he is beginning to consider the voice that says so to be somewhat suspect, and so instead he settles for going inside to sprawl on a couch with his arm over his face, contemplating the death of his hopes and dreams. He’s obscurely pleased to recall that it’s possible to be dramatically miserable while reasonably sober. 

“Are you planning to dress?” Maevaris says, passing through the room on her way upstairs with her escort for the evening, whose name Dorian can't remember. They are on their way to some sort of party, and Dorian has no desire to go to a party, which he recognizes distantly as uncharacteristic and mildly alarming. 

“No,” he says. “I’ll just lie here.” 

“As you like,” she says, and goes up to dress. She and the gentleman come back downstairs after a while, Maevaris spectacular in emerald with a shawl of peacock feathers. “Please leave the good brandy alone.” 

“I’m not drunk,” Dorian says, and turns his face into the pillow. 

“Is this remarkable?” the man asks, and Maevaris murmurs something Dorian can’t hear, and removes her friend. 

When they’re gone, the house is very quiet, and Dorian finds himself listening for footsteps. He isn’t thinking about being dragged out of his lover’s bed by his father’s retainers— _his head spinning from the first sickening blow, but not too much to recognize the Pavus family livery, the first cold thread of betrayal_ — 

He isn’t thinking about that. He isn’t thinking about Felix being dragged from the coach by darkspawn, or about Alexius sleepless and insistent that they not sleep until they could find a cure, his eyes hot and miserable and not entirely sane. He won’t think about any of it. 

He has landed on his feet, and now all he has to do is find some way to repair the wreckage he’s made of his life. Except that he can’t see a way forward, no matter how long he huddles at one end of the couch with his arms around his knees, telling himself that nothing is broken beyond repair. 

Eventually the door opens, much earlier than he expected. It’s Maevaris alone, with her escort’s borrowed jacket around her shoulders instead of the peacock shawl. From the breath of air through the door, the night has turned unseasonably cool. 

“You are an impossible boy,” she says, and comes to sit at the other end of the couch. “You’ve entirely spoiled my evening worrying about you, and I see that I was right. Suppose you tell me about it?” 

Dorian laughs, entirely without humor. “Which part? The part where my father had me kidnapped and planned to use blood magic to make me _normal_? The part where I told Alexius he ought to get over the fact that Felix is going to die? The part where Felix—” 

He isn’t expecting that to be the thing that breaks him. He would have expected it to be the blood magic, or the men he’s fucked since running away from home for the sake of a bed for the night and the chance of breakfast in the morning, or wondering whether he will ever actually stop being afraid. But it’s Felix, finally, that makes his voice crack and his throat knot. 

“There, darling, I know,” Mae says, and puts her arm around his shoulders. 

Dorian doesn’t cry, he tells himself after a while, wiping his face on his sleeves. Therefore whatever he has been doing cannot possibly be described as crying on Maevaris’s shoulder. “I’ve ruined my life,” he says. 

“You’ve complicated it a bit,” she grants. “Have you tried telling Alexius that you’re sorry?” 

“I wrote a letter,” Dorian says. “I expect he burned it.” 

“We are dramatic people, aren’t we?” Maevaris has hiked up her skirt to cross her legs on the sofa, and looks less like she’s performing than he’s ever seen before. “I thought when you blew off the party that you meant to go on working on that monograph you’ve been writing, until it occurred to me you didn’t have pen and ink within reach.” 

“There’s no point in that.” 

“You can’t be that bad a theoretician. Felix says Alexius thought very highly of your work.” 

“And who’s going to think highly of it at present?” 

Maevaris looks torn between sympathy and frustration. “How old are you?” she asks. “Surely old enough not to need to be patted on the head every time you do something right. If you’re doing interesting work, people will find it interesting. If you don’t find it interesting yourself, you might give some small portion of your attention to politics. ” 

“To please you, or to spite my father?” 

“Are those genuinely the only motivations you can imagine? I was under the impression that you had actual views of your own. You can’t approve of blood magic.” 

“I don’t,” he says, abruptly somber. 

“And I had gotten the impression from Felix that you also don’t approve of attempts to restore Tevinter’s glories through a spectacular losing military campaign, as continually proposed by the more hot-headed members of the Magisterium.” 

“I don’t approve of that either. And I would like to see us improve the fortunes of the soporati, rather than merely hoading wealth and power until the Magisterium topples over under its weight. I just feel that I’ve exerted rather a lot of effort so far avoiding the respectable career that my father laid out for me. It seems a shame to waste it.” 

“That word, ‘respectable,’ again,” Maevaris says. “I could be respectable. All it would take is leaving Tevinter and establishing myself where no one would ever question my womanhood for an instant. Do you know why I haven’t?” 

“Everywhere else is a barbarian wasteland?” 

“You are absurdly provincial. Orlais is entirely civilized. I haven’t left for three reasons. First, I’m far too stubborn to ever run. Second, I’m far too attached to my birthright to ever trade it for respectability. I like power, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. And, third, Tevinter needs me.” She says the last very simply, and without any shame. 

“I used to think it needed me, too,” Dorian says, unsure when that began to seem like a shameful admission to him. His assumed responsibility for the fate of the nation was a certainty of his childhood, and perhaps it’s one he needn’t actually throw into the fire now. 

“You know that it does. We both love this wretched place, even when it makes every effort to crush us under its metaphorical heel. Pick yourself up and help fight for it. That’s a better cause than spiting anyone.” 

“I do enjoy spite, though,” Dorian says eventually, and Maevaris smiles. 

“In moderation,” she says, and goes to pour them both a single glass of wine. 

***** 

The evening of Oppius’s annual party, Dorian is obscurely pleased to receive an offer to come and stay with a distant cousin in Qarinus, said cousin being from a branch of the family that has been feuding with his own for several generations. There is a certain comfort in believing that there are some distant relatives to whom he isn’t anathema, even if he's still reluctant to trust that it isn't a trick.

Maevaris has procured Dorian an invitation to the party as her escort, which he wouldn't have considered possible.

“I’m meant to vouch for your good behavior,” she says. “Actually, I think Oppius has forgotten all about it. He wasn’t particularly sober himself at the time.” 

The party is glittering and crowded and hot. Dorian talks dutifully about politics, and more pleasantly about recent experiments in increasing the maximum temperature of fire, and only in stolen moments about whose fashion sense he considers the most questionable. 

He makes a point of being courteous to Maevaris’s friend Apollonia, who is there in the company of a slightly older girl called Olivia who clings possessively to her arm. Apollonia seems to have forgiven him for being unsociable, or perhaps has forgotten him entirely. 

He fetches up by the punch table with Maevaris, who seems to be thriving on an evening of social combat. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asks, sipping a cup of the cloying punch. Dorian has procured his own glass of cooler wine from a servant, and is nursing it appreciatively. 

“You know, I am,” he says. “I'm even behaving myself, although—” 

He breaks off as Maevaris’s face changes. He follows her gaze to Apollonia, who is supporting her friend while the girl doubles over in obvious pain, a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. “Help me get them out of here, right now,” Mae says, and he follows. 

They wind up in a closed sitting room, with Olivia huddled on a cloth-draped sofa. “What did she drink?” Maevaris demands. 

“Wine. A servant brought her a single glass, on a tray,” Apollonia says, her voice rising sharply in realization. 

“I’ll be all right,” Olivia says, but her voice is ragged. 

Maevaris sits behind Olivia and takes her weight, her hands lighting with a blue glow. “It’s definitely poison,” she says. “It could be worse. Let me see what I can do.” She catches Dorian's eye and jerks her chin at Apollonia pointedly.

“Come and take a walk with me,” Dorian says, hooking his arm through Apollonia’s when she doesn’t immediately move. “Chin up, bright smile, let them all see us in a public place, and we’ll go out on a balcony where you can scream if you like.” 

“I wouldn’t scream,” Apollonia says, indignant enough that she’s steady on his arm. He gets her out onto the balcony, and stays with her while she wrings her hands. “I never thought it wouldn't be safe to drink the wine.” 

“Anyone might have made the same mistake,” Dorian says, and resolves to stick to punch for the remainder of the evening. 

There’s a lengthy pause. “My parents don't approve of me going about with her,” Apollonia says finally in a small voice. “Was this because of me?” 

There’s no answer he can make that will be entirely comforting. Even if this was about the political, not the personal, she’ll never know for sure that her family didn’t do this. He knows she'll never be entirely certain she wasn’t betrayed. 

“Surely your friend is capable of making enemies on her own,” Dorian says. 

Apollonia lifts a stubborn chin. “She is that.” 

“So we’ll find out who did this, yes?” 

“Are you offering to help?” 

Dorian finds that he is. “I would enjoy nothing more. It isn’t truly a party in Tevinter until you’ve made at least one deadly enemy, after all.” 

“That shouldn’t be hard for you,” she says, so perhaps she does remember him after all. She isn’t wrong, but he's endeavoring make a better class of enemy these days. 

Eventually Maevaris emerges, looking tired but satisfied. “She’ll do,” she says. “I have a friend downstairs who'll help get her home. Did the two of you come together, or are you supposed to leave with someone else?” 

“ _Fuck_ what I’m supposed to do,” Apollonia says. “I can get home before anyone actually sends out a search party.” 

“Mind that you do, then, and come and see me when you can,” Maevaris says. The girl makes a determined dash back into the thick of the party, and Maevaris leans wearily on the balcony. “Well, that was an unnecessary amount of excitement in the evening.” 

“So was this politics, or one of our charming Tevene expressions of parental concern?” 

“Darling, I have not a single clue, and the children will expect us to have figured it all out by morning.” 

“Well, we are so terribly clever,” he says, coming to join her at the balcony rail. The city below is sleeping, but in a few hours it will be awake, and he supposes at this rate he will be too. 

“There's simply no rest for the wicked,” she says, and leans against his shoulder to watch the city lights below.


End file.
